Kennedy was moving to the outfield to play, LF to be specific. If you think at the time that a) Kennedy is gonna make the team and b) could get quite a few at-bats because he looks 28 out there and not 35, with a chip on his shoulder, and c) the college hitter of the decade will be showing up this year to play Kennedy's position, then...
Even before you know that Jack Wilson is a lost cause or Chone Figgins is a lost cause you know you need to McLemore a scenario that gets ABs for Kennedy if he can be that Spring Training player all year.
He has been for 2 months now, with no signs of it stopping, so personally I send "My strike zone is bigger than the faces on Mt. Rushmore and I have a pathological need to swing at anything my bat can theoretically make contact with" Peguero and send him back to the minors.
And Kennedy plays LF/3B.
Saunders needs to go down and take a million hacks to figure out how to merge his old pull-power swing into his new I'm-pathetic swing somehow.
Peguero needs to get hit with a ruler every time he swings at a pitch around his throat or that bounces before the plate. I hope everyone can see what I'm talking about with Peguero now: The swing LOOKS great and when he's hot he can Vlad Guerrero his way into hitting pitches off his shoestrings and hitting screaming line-drive HRs...but it's not a consistent skill. He doesn't see the ball and make contact with the ball like Vlad. So he has huge months and mediocre seasons.
I would trade him, to anyone who thinks they can fix that problem.
But for the immediate future, Tacoma is his place, just as Safeco is Ackley's place in about 10 days, just as soon as his Super 2 status runs out.
And with the Figgins situation worsening and Ackley demolishing AAA after a slow start they can claim, "see, just needed the finishing touches" and promote him "on merit" as it were. Good deal all around.
But adding a plus bat to replace about 3-people's worth of minus bats is a great help.
More Kennedy + 400 ABs of Ackley minus Saunders/Peguero/half of Figgins = a serious amount of Win right there, even if Kennedy slides back some toward his norm. 85 or 90 OPS+ from Kennedy would be a FIFTY OPS+ improvement over the 350 plate appearances from Chone/Saunders (who COMBINE for a 40) and Peguero is now below 60 himself and sliding further down with every hapless at-bat.
We're competing now - no more time for experiments with guys who haven't got the skills or the mentality to succeed in 2011.
We did the Oakland thing of spending 2 months finding out what we have. Now it's time to go to war with the players who are here to fight.
~G
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